Just another Tuesday morning. I dropped my sons off at school while my husband got our daughter on the bus. I headed out to my relatively new job in Hartford. The paid marketing internship scored by a contact through my faculty advisor was a miracle for me. Well, for the whole family really. Working for an up and coming video game developer was more than I dared dream for. This degree was already proving fruitful, despite having a few more classes to go before graduation. Before I knew it, I'd be giving my family the life I'd hoped for since starting college in my thirties. I had to admit that it was sometimes overwhelming to be a student, provider, and chronic illness patient on top of being a wife and mother of three. But as I always said, I go on because I have no other choice.
The traffic on I-84 East was brutal that day. One imagines the morning rush as bumper to bumper cars moving at a snail's pace. Not today. Swarms of vehicles traveling at speeds better suited to the Autobahn flowed around me like a river around a large rock. I sighed to myself. This was not a good portent of what the gorgeous New England autumn day might have in store. I sipped my coffee and slowed the car down because fuck that noise. Breakneck speed in order to keep up with the rest of the herd was not worth risking my life. I rolled down the car window just enough to savor the crisp air, but not enough to chill my joints underneath my thick black hoodie. Another benefit of this job was the casual attire we were allowed to wear.
As I set my travel mug back down, the aura started. No. No no no no no. Not here, and not now. While I had previously felt panic at the warning signs of one of my epileptic seizures beginning, this was different. I'd never been behind the wheel before when one hit. I slammed on my hazard lights, and tried desperately to maneuver the damn car over to the shoulder. No one would move out of my way! I lost control of my hands and felt the jarring thud of impact. The last thought I clearly remember having was how odd it was to hear the tinkle of breaking glass so clearly. Everything grayed out in my vision, then the blackness took me.
Two figures crossed the alley between buildings in the foggy night. Between them was a sagging third form, carried as a heavy weight often is. A body perhaps? The surreptitious behavior did not seem out of place in the eerily muffled quiet and dim glow of neon lights through the fog.
"Hey, be careful with her! I don't think she's simply unconscious." the first person said, keeping his voice as low as possible.
"I'm trying, Nicky. She just slipped out of my grip a bit." whispered the second.
"Let's just get her into my office. I want to take a closer look while I can. Everything about her feels wrong."
'One look and I yelled "timber"
Watch out for flying glass
'Cause the ceiling fell in
And the bottom fell out
I went in to a spin
And I started to shout
"I've been hit, this is it, this is it"'
The music played, quietly and oddly distant. My mind swirled through the thick soup of growing awareness. I carefully opened my eyes even though I was not quite ready to face reality. Those feelings of exhaustion and unease at the missing block of time that always come after my seizures were the first things I noticed. Well, second things really. First was that music I couldn't quite place. I groaned as I attempted to sit up.
"I know that song. Nat King Cole." I said mostly to myself. What in the world had happened to me? Who allows music in a hospital room? Surely I must be in a hospital after the accident.
"Hold on now. Don't sit up too fast. I don't need a strange woman collapsing in my office." came a voice that held a certain familiarity.
"Office? What? No. No, that's not possible. The accident… which hospital am I at? Hartford Hospital? St. Francis? Please tell me it's not St. Francis." I begged.
"I can assure you that you're not at St. Francis hospital. As I said you're in my office. My first question would have been asking if you knew where you were. Clearly, that's a big no." the voice replied.
Where had I heard him before? I could barely make out a shadowy form in the darkened room. Everything was so blurry.
"My glasses. I can't see much of anything without them. Are they here? Or did I break them when I crashed my car?" I asked.
My mind struggled to make sense of it all. I knew my seizures happened in my left frontal lobe. My neurologist had told me that I have complex partial epilepsy, and that it impacted the part of my brain that governed emotions, memory, and personality. Having electrical misfires in the part of my brain that holds the essence of who I am is definitely not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination. What if this time my worst nightmares came true, and my mind was irrevocably damaged? That had to be it. None of what was happening to me made any sort of sense.
I took a deep breath in an attempt to calm my racing heart. Glancing over to my right to where the now silent mystery man stood, I tried to get a clearer image of who I was dealing with. The only thing that I could better determine was that he was a smoker. The odor of his cigarette was unmistakable. I think that's what finally settled it for me. No one smokes in a hospital anymore. If all he said was true, that I was somehow on a bed within his office, then where the hell had I ended up? What exactly had happened to me once I blacked out?
"Hey! Glasses? They here or what?" I demanded testily. Dulled senses put me on edge, and feeling more of that old 'fight or flight' was the last thing I needed right then.
"Yeah, I've got 'em. If you're going to continue being a jackass about it though, I'll just hold onto them." Mystery man's tone took on a decidedly agitated bent. Great. Good going, Brenna. Offend the guy when you're at his mercy.
"I'm sorry. It's just…I can't see. Please?" I needed to at least try to be kinder in my responses to him if I had any hope of getting my way.
"They're on the table next to you." he said with a slight nod of his head to indicate the direction of the table. His voice came a little more gently, and that was definitely a relief.
Squinting, I reached out for my glasses, my lifeline in this strange situation. I held them up towards the light, which turned out to be a shaded lamp on a desk back across the room to the far left of me. The lenses were intact, if disgustingly smudged. While I began polishing them on my shirt, I figured I'd ask him a few questions. Maybe that would help me to understand a bit more of who he was.
"So. Your voice. Have I heard it before?" I asked quietly.
"You were unconscious when one of those dumb sacks of muscles that passes for security around here and I carried you in. I had my doubts as to whether or not you'd wake up. Glad to see I was wrong about you." he said.
Ah. The glasses were finally passably clean. Now to see what the Mystery Man looked like. As I put them on and swiveled my head towards where his voice had been coming from since I awoke, he took a drag of the cigarette he'd been smoking. The increased glow from it illuminated his face. Holy shit. He must've heard my stunned gasp because the frown on his face spoke volumes.
"Look, I know the skin and exposed metal isn't exactly comforting but we've got to get to the bottom of this situation first. There will be time for personal revelations later." he said gruffly.
He stepped out from the shadows beneath the flight of stairs where he'd been standing. The man before me wore a battered trench coat over an equally distressed white button down shirt. His gray tie fit loosely as it was partially undone. On his head was a fedora that had clearly seen better days. That's where any semblance of humanity ended. His eyes. My Goddess, his eyes were glowing yellow. I could practically feel them gliding over my body while mine took him in as well. His right hand was nothing more than an exposed metal endoskeleton. Bits of that same metal could also be seen through the left side of his face, and throughout his neck.
"Who…what are you?" I asked, unable to hide my shock.
"New to the Commonwealth, are you? I'm a synth." he said.
"Wait, what? Synth? The hell is that?" I asked.
"20 questions, eh? Synth. As in synthetic man. All of the parts minus the red blood cells." This guy had mastered sarcasm, that's for sure.
"Well, just where am I if it's not a hospital? Office of what, exactly?" I continued with my barrage of questions. It was all I could think to do while I tried to recover my senses.
"Welcome to the Valentine Detective Agency. Nick Valentine at your service." he said.
"Are you shitting me?! Should've guessed, what with your noir look going on. So your name is Nick? Not some funky numeric designation?" I asked.
He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, simply staring at me with a raised eyebrow as if to ask if I was done being an asshole. This was swiftly going nowhere.
I sighed deeply. "Nick…Mr. Valentine, I'm sorry. You've done nothing but help me as far as I know, and here I am treating you like shit. I'm so confused by all of this. I didn't mean to offend you. I just need answers." I said contritely.
A small smile touched his lips, and he came over to sit beside me on the bed.
"Normally, I'm the one with the questions but I can see that you and I are two birds of a feather on this. A lovely but strangely dressed woman materializes outside the walls of the city, right in front of the guards' eyes. Not just unconscious but dead, with no visible explanation as to how she ended up in such a state. No wonder Diamond City security ran for Nicky the detective." he said.
Now it was my turn to stare at him. "Lovely woman, huh?" I couldn't keep the impish smile off of my face or the amused pleasure out of my voice. I've always had difficulty controlling my playful nature, and often used inappropriate humor to diffuse situations that I found uncomfortable.
Nick shook his head in apparent exasperation and yet he still smiled in return. "So captivated by my handsome mug that you missed the part about dead and out of thin air, I see." he said.
"Guess I was. Um, I mean did. Miss the dead part. But clearly, I'm not dead unless this is some seriously trippy version of the afterlife." I paused for a moment to think before continuing. "Hold on. You had mentioned the Commonwealth. Of Massachusetts? I'm up in Mass? But I was just outside of Hartford, Connecticut when the crash happened."
Nick stood, and offered his hand, the one that clearly gave away what lay under his skin. Although grateful for the assistance, I was still cautious as I laid my hand in his. A slight look of surprise touched his face and was gone in an instant. Blink, and you'd miss it.
"Come outside with me. Maybe seeing more of your surroundings will help jog your memory." he said as he guided me to the red door that led to the strange world beyond.